Is it Hollsopple or Holsopple?

May 28, 2009|By BRIAN SCHROCK, Somerset Magazine Staff Writer

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Like a lot of small towns, Hollsopple was built by the railroad.

The Hollsopple Centennial booklet says the town owes its existence to the proposed Johnstown and Somerset Railway, which later became known as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. After the completion of the railroad in 1880, the town was laid out in lots on Henry Blough’s farm. Homes, stores and a post office quickly followed.

Thirty years later came a massive undertaking to build the Quemahoning Dam. The five-year project required considerable infusions of labor, equipment and building materials, and the operators of the Hollsopple Train Station were happy to comply. The train station was also a destination point for travelers who arrived by rail, stayed at the Hollsopple Hotel and then rented a horse to travel the rest of the way to the scenic dam.

According to the booklet, one of the earliest local industries was the burning of charcoal by farmers, who hauled it to the charcoal sheds along the Stonycreek River. From there, it was loaded onto box cars and shipped to the iron mills.

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The railroad also supported the lumber and coal mining industries, delivering supplies, equipment and food in exchange for millions of tons of coal and timber.

With the advent of the automobile and bus service, the B&O suspended passenger service in the 1930s. The last freight train stopped there sometime in the mid-1950s or early 1960s. As the booklet states: Hollsopple “watched, somewhat painfully, the closing of the B&O Railroad Station.”

Higher unemployment followed. A town that was once dotted with grocery stores, barbershops, a perfume factory, taverns, dance halls and a theater now only has enough businesses to number on one hand. When longtime borough council member George Knapp talks about the town today, he focuses a lot on empty lots — places where things used to be.

But an effort is under way to improve Hollsopple’s future by hearkening back to its railroading past. In 1994 the Holsopple Historical Society began a project to restore the train station and turn it into a museum.

Operating on a shoestring budget, the society has rewired the entire building and added new lighting. An Eagle Scout candidate repainted the exterior. College students helped to replace a bay window.

The group is also planning a landscaping project in conjunction with a broader effort to market the town to white-water enthusiasts.

Historical society President Bill Marshall said the group hopes to have the train station project finished sometime in the next two years.

“We’re getting there,” he said. “It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of chicken barbecues and other fundraisers.”

Facts and Figures: (For Benson Borough)

Population: 194 (101 males and 93 females)

Median age: 41

Drive time: It takes the average Benson (or Hollsopple) resident about 20 minutes to travel to work.

Residents past and present you may know: the late Dr. H.A. Zimmerman, a physician for coal companies, the railroad and men working to construct the Quemahoning Dam; the late Dr. George Grazier, a World War I veteran credited with delivering more than 3,000 babies; former WJAC-TV news director Ron Stephenson

What’s in a name? To the casual onlooker, Hollsopple would seem to be having an identity crisis. The town, or borough, goes by two names: Hollsopple and Benson, and the spelling of Hollsopple (one “L” or two?) has been debated for years.

The town owes its name to Charles Holsopple, one of eight children of Henry Holsopple and Susannah LeFevre.

After getting married, the couple settled in the western part of Virginia, now West Virginia, where Indian raids were a common occurrence. The white settlers organized a group to provide protection from the raids and succeeded in driving their adversaries across the border into Ohio. But Holsopple was captured by Indians and burned at the stake. His widow took the children back to her hometown of York, where her father was a merchant.

Sister Anne Frances Pulling details what happened next in her book “Somerset County, Pennsylvania: A History in Images”:

“A soldier, who had been paid for his military service with a land grant, had come into Susan’s father’s store to buy an overcoat, but he had no money. He paid for the coat with his five hundred acres of land, which Susan’s father offered to her. It was necessary to occupy the land in order to retain possession of it, so Susan took the children and immediately went west to claim the land. She built a cabin and made it their permanent settlement. The family became prominent in the area and the Holsopple post office was named after Susan and Henry’s son Charles in 1881.”